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I started out my day yesterday with hopes of changing up my Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe to make it a little more festive. I thought that adding Mini M & Ms to the cookies would make them more festive. I got that butter out when I was making breakfast in the morning to let it soften. The recipe calls for melted butter, but I have never had success when melting the butter (gluten-free or not gluten-free). I didn’t get around to mixing the dough until 4:00. Here is how the first tray turned out:

After this, I promptly stuck the dough in the fridge to chill, hoping that would help. Not my luck. A little better, but still spread way too much. The next tray came out like that as well. I quickly abandoned any thoughts of making another tray & pressed the remaining dough into a round Pyrex dish & made a round bar cookie. It came out wonderfully!

Here are the cookies – I cut them into thin bars. They taste amazing, but look horrible! LOL!

I was tweeting last night about my flop and Shirley from Gluten-free Easily had a great idea. She told me to freeze the cookies & use them later for a pie crust! Brilliant! I would just need to crush & add butter or oil & press into a pan. Never throw away your flops – they can be used for something. These may not make it to the cookie crumb crust – the kids love them!

Tips/Notes

The recipe can be found on the link above. Omit the oats and don’t use melted butter. Do soften the butter, but only for a hour or 2.

This recipe is normally a huge success. I love the flavor.

I wanted to show that even though “Life gave me lemons, I made lemonade”. I turned a potentially frustrating & upsetting situation into a joke & laughed about it. That is all you can do. Baking is about trial & error, just like a lot of things in life. It isn’t just gluten-free baking that is like that, either, though it does seem to require a little more patience at times. There have been times over the past 4 years that I have thrown in the towel and said I wouldn’t bake again, but I did. I am glad I did. It may just be the flour mix or the temperature in the oven. Or, you may never figure out what the problem was. Just don’t stop trying. :)

Did you catch Dr. Oz’s show on Celiac Disease yesterday? I thought the first 15 – 20 minutes were very informative. The animation & details about symptoms were just what needed to be shown & said to get the word out to those who may be suffering. I was a little disappointed when the conversation turned to the gluten-free diet being great for weight loss even if you don’t have Celiac or gluten intolerance. This seems to lessen the importance of the gluten-free diet for those who really need it. While it is great to have so much awareness, this shouldn’t be promoted as the newest “fad diet”. For those who have Celiac, this is the only “cure”. Cross contamination can make Celiacs sick and cause damage. I was also curious as to how many people actually lose weight on the gluten-free diet. I tweeted the question and I received mixed responses. Some people did lose weight, but others gained. I gained weight (needed to). The weight gain most likely comes from the body finally being able to absorb the nutrients that it couldn’t when the villi were damaged. Another very important point that I initially missed – Dr. Oz mentioned trying the GF diet first for a few weeks and then getting tested – don’t do this! If you remove gluten-from your diet & then go get tested, the results can be skewed. Get tested first, then remove the gluten. Dr Oz does have an informative page on his site – lots of good info there.

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14 Responses

Hey Kim–Thanks for the shout out! I love both sets of cookies shown here. My beloved brown sugar chocolate chip cookie recipe is a bit finnicky and still I get the spread all over the pan from time to time. I just cut it or break it and serve it up anyway. That happened at Thanksgiving. I called it cookie brittle and people were eating it like crazy and raving over it. My sister even took some home for her hubby who was working. One day failed peanut butter cookie even went in to my morning breakfast cereal concoction. Peanut butter cookie crumbs, bananas, pecans, and milk. It was pretty good. I wouldn’t do that often, but like you said, “When life gives you lemons …” The rest of those did go in the freezer. I think it will be a great cookie crumb crust for a chocolate peanut butter pie recipe I just saw. :-) Keep on baking!

I am so glad that Dr. Oz did talk about celiac and much of what was presented was good. The fact that Dr. Green talked about symptoms like neurological ones and malignancies (I wonder how many malignancies really are caused by undiagnosed celiac frankly), for example. I was so grateful that he mentioned non-celiac gluten sensitvity, too. I understand he’s been doing more and more research in that area. Things that annoyed me about the show were the weight loss thing. It just wasn’t presented correctly. There are folks who are overweight from celiac due to inflammation, eating and eating because they are not absorbing the vitamins and minerals, etc. and SOME of them do lose weight naturally from going gluten free. The reason some folks gain weight after going gluten free is the fact that they switch over to so many processed foods because they are labeled gluten free. That’s one of my pet peeves. Some people forget about eating real food because they are told, here’s the food you can eat and it all is high carbs, high sugar, high starches, etc. And, of course, Hasselbeck always bothers me with the misinformation she dispenses. Most bleu cheese is gluten free; one has to check, but it’s not off limits like she said. And, instant coffee … same thing. No wonder the poor newly diagnosed Amy said she was glad wine was gluten free. She was overwhelmed with what Hasselbeck was saying. The other thing that bothered me is that celiac is always presented in isolation and then a ton of possibly related issues come up and nobody says, “oh, that could be celiac.” Several of the topics that came up after the celiac part could be related to gluten issues like the woman who had fibroids and some of the others I can’t recall right now. I’m going to show the celiac part to my group on Tuesday at our meeting and get their feedback. I’d be thrilled if Dr. Oz would do a whole show on celiac and gluten intolerance/sensitivity and really focus on the experts. One step at a time though … and I swear that if Oprah ever gets diagnosed with celiac or gluten issues (and I’m convinced she has them), the whole world will get tested for celiac! Of course, the other thing that will impact the diagnosis rate is a drug being approved for celiac/gluten issues … you’ll be seeing ads on tv–“If you have blah blah blah, talk to your doctor about prescription X and end those symptoms.” The scope of the celiac definition will expand then so Big Pharma will have tons and tons of new consumers.

I saw the show, and also have mixed feelings. I found that they presented it well in some aspects, but made the transition to gluten free seem so much harder than it really is. She mentioned that it would be toughest for teenagers – I find that the opposite. I have parents that cook most of my meals – making it a no-brainer at home, and when with friends, they get it. When we go somewhere where food is involved, someone always says they feel sorry for me, but honestly, being able to go out – even just to the movies – is amazing! A year or two ago, school was my absolute maximum. Now, its not. I don’t mind not having the pizza with my friends if it means that I’m off the couch and actually living my life.

In terms of the weight thing, I’ve always been a rail, so it let me grow, and put on a bit of healthy weight, but I’m not much different from then. Except for the energy, colour in my face, stuff like that! Anyways, at least they got some word out about it.

And Shirley – I’m interested in this Oprah theory. Wouldn’t that be something.

Well, if he ever needs to vent to someone who gets it (age-wise), he can email me (if its okay with you, of course). I find it becomes a big topic of conversation every once in awhile, but other than that, I’m pretty much normal like my friends.

Hi Kim! Something my husband and I have started doing quite often when baking cookies and brownies for the kids is using a muffin top pan. When the goodies spread (as they often inevitably do), they can only spread so far. If you can believe it, people actually think we buy their brownies at a store because they’re all a uniform size. We were so happy when we first figured this out. Give it a try and see if it works for you too!

I just read this post, particularly about the Dr. Oz show. I missed it. I am kind of shocked that he said to try the diet first and then get tested. I unfortunately did this (because I had not researched enough to see that the results would be skewed) and I am now having a hard time with doctors/getting the diagnosis. In order to get the diagnosis, the doctors are suggesting a gluten challenge, which I am not sure I can tolerate.

Oh, I am still meaning to make that oreo cookie cake with the white chocolate frosting. I am thinking for Christmas… unfortunately, we do not have the Betty Crocker mixes available here in my area, so I will have to try it with a different mix. So sad! :(